Decision committee structure for brownfield versus RISE.

The decision between brownfield S/4HANA and RISE with SAP usually arrives at the executive committee as a yes or no vote on a recommendation that has already been shaped by a smaller working group. The membership of that working group, the questions it was asked to answer, and the cadence at which it met determine the quality of the recommendation. A working group that is too narrow, too operational, or too SAP centric produces a recommendation that the board approves and that the organisation regrets four years later. A working group that is balanced across commercial, architectural, financial, legal, and operational disciplines produces a recommendation that withstands the seven year horizon. This article describes the committee structure that buyers should put in place, the mandate it should carry, and the meeting cadence that converts a brownfield versus RISE question into a defensible commitment.

The two committee structure

The disciplined buyer runs two committees in parallel rather than one. The first is the decision committee, which carries the final recommendation to the board. The second is the working committee, which produces the analysis that the decision committee evaluates. The separation matters because the decision committee includes senior people whose calendars cannot support the weekly depth of work that the analysis requires, and the working committee includes specialists whose mandate does not extend to the final commercial commitment. Compressing both functions into a single body produces either a decision committee that approves work it has not actually scrutinised, or a working committee that overreaches its authority and locks in commercial positions that have not been reviewed at the level the decision deserves.

The decision committee meets every four to six weeks across the evaluation period. Its sessions are structured as evaluations of working committee outputs rather than as deliberation spaces. Each session has a defined deliverable in front of it, a defined set of questions to answer, and a defined output that feeds the next session. The pace is deliberate. The aim is to avoid the pattern in which the committee meets monthly to discuss progress without converging on a recommendation, then is forced into a rushed final session when the SAP quarter end arrives.

The working committee meets weekly across the evaluation period. Its sessions are structured as analytical sprints. Each week takes a specific question from the workstream backlog, drives it to a documented conclusion, and feeds the conclusion to the decision committee on the agreed cadence.

Decision committee membership

The decision committee carries five named members at a minimum. The Chief Financial Officer or a named delegate sits as the financial sponsor and as the owner of the seven year TCO position the buyer brings into negotiation. The Chief Information Officer sits as the technology sponsor and as the owner of the architectural recommendation. The Chief Procurement Officer sits as the commercial sponsor and as the owner of the negotiation strategy with SAP and with the hyperscalers. A senior business owner from one of the functions most affected by the SAP estate, typically Finance, Supply Chain, or Manufacturing, sits as the business sponsor and as the owner of the operational continuity considerations. The General Counsel or a senior commercial lawyer sits as the legal sponsor and as the owner of the contract risk position.

The five member structure has the property that no single function can carry the recommendation alone. A finance led decision tends to overweight commercial structure and underweight operational risk. A technology led decision tends to overweight architectural elegance and underweight commercial leverage. A procurement led decision tends to overweight pricing and underweight long term flexibility. A business led decision tends to overweight short term continuity and underweight contractual structure. The legal voice is the corrective on commitments that the other four members would otherwise accept without scrutiny.

Larger organisations sometimes add a Chief Risk Officer or a Chief Information Security Officer to the decision committee. The addition is appropriate when the buyer operates in a regulated industry where the data sovereignty, sub processor, and operational resilience requirements warrant a dedicated voice at the decision level. In unregulated industries, the security and risk function is usually best represented through the legal sponsor with periodic deep dives at the working committee level.

Working committee membership

The working committee is the analytical engine that feeds the decision committee. It carries a wider membership organised across five workstreams. The TCO workstream models the seven year cost of brownfield, RISE, and hybrid options under defined assumptions, with sensitivity analysis on FX, FUE growth, hyperscaler reserved capacity, BTP allocation drawdown, and renewal uplift. The architecture workstream maps the technical pathways, the integration boundary, the BTP extension model, and the operational support model under each option. The commercial workstream develops the negotiation strategy, the benchmark dataset, the SAP account team mapping, and the hyperscaler decoupling position. The contract workstream develops the term sheet, the contractual deviations the buyer will require, and the clause level positions on data portability, exit credits, indirect access, and FUE conversion. The change workstream develops the workforce transition plan, the partner sourcing plan, and the communication strategy with the broader organisation.

Each workstream is led by a named owner who reports to the working committee chair. The chair is usually a senior programme director who reports administratively to the CIO or CFO but operates independently across the workstreams. The independence matters because the workstream outputs sometimes conflict, and the chair has to surface the conflicts to the decision committee rather than resolve them through line management pressure.

The working committee includes representation from internal audit, from the data privacy office, and from the operational technology function where the SAP estate touches plant control systems. These representatives are not full members but are named consult roles for the workstreams that touch their domains.

The mandate the committees should carry

The mandate that the decision committee operates under should be written down before the evaluation begins. The mandate states the question the committee is empowered to answer, the boundary of the decision space, the budget envelope for the evaluation, the timeline, and the escalation path back to the board. Without a written mandate, the committee tends to drift toward the question that the loudest member wants to answer, which is rarely the question the board needs answered.

The standard mandate for a brownfield versus RISE evaluation reads as follows. The committee is empowered to recommend whether to continue with the brownfield S/4HANA path, convert to RISE with SAP under a defined commercial envelope, or adopt a hybrid model that combines elements of both. The recommendation must address the seven year TCO position, the operational risk position, the workforce implication, the contractual position, and the partner ecosystem implication. The recommendation must be supported by an independent benchmark on the commercial offer, by a documented architectural review, and by a written legal opinion on the contract risk. The recommendation must be presented to the board no later than the agreed date, with the option for the board to send the recommendation back for revision rather than to accept or reject it directly.

Meeting cadence and decision rhythm

The meeting cadence converts the committees from a structural feature into an operational discipline. The working committee meets weekly for ninety minutes. The first thirty minutes review the prior week deliverables across workstreams. The middle thirty minutes work the highest priority cross workstream question. The final thirty minutes plan the deliverables for the next week. The chair publishes a one page summary within forty eight hours of each meeting that records the outputs, the open questions, and the assignments.

The decision committee meets every five weeks for two hours. The first thirty minutes review the working committee outputs since the prior decision session. The middle ninety minutes work the strategic question the chair has placed in front of the committee, with a documented set of options and a recommended position. The final ninety minutes confirm the direction for the next five weeks of working committee effort. The chair publishes a one page record of decisions within twenty four hours of each meeting.

The cadence carries through to the board. The board receives a brief written update at each scheduled board meeting across the evaluation period, with a deep session reserved for the final recommendation. The brief updates prevent the situation in which the board sees the final recommendation cold, with no prior exposure to the trade offs the committees have been working through.

Conclusion: the committee is the recommendation

The recommendation that goes to the board carries the weight of the committee that produced it. A brownfield versus RISE recommendation produced by a narrow committee, even if the analysis is competent, sits on a fragile base that fractures the first time the seven year horizon throws an unexpected event at the organisation. A recommendation produced by a balanced two committee structure, with a clear mandate, a written meeting cadence, and a documented sequence of decisions, carries an organisational consensus that survives the inevitable surprises of the seven year operating life. The committee structure is not administrative overhead. It is the mechanism through which the decision becomes defensible.